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RESTORATION 


OF UNION. 


SPEECH 


OF 




WILLIAM H. 


SEWARD, 


THE CITIZENS OF NEW YORK, 


AT COOPER INSTITUTE, 


FEBRUARY! 


JS, 1866, 


ON THE 




RESTORATION 


OF UNION. 


WASHINGTON: 1 Ad °° 
1866. "tSS' 

999 3 




WILLIAM H. SEWARD 



THE CITIZENS OF NEW YORK, AT COOPER INSTITUTE, 



FEBRUARY 22, 1866, 



,ON THE 



RESTORATION OF UNION 







WASHINGTON 

1866. 



s 



BESTOKATION OP UIIOI 



SPEECH 



OF 



WILLIAM H. SEWARD, 



AT 



COOPER INSTITUTE, FEBRUARY 22, 18G6. 



Upon Mr. Seward's recognition of the applause which 
greeted him, the vast audience rose en masse, and wel- 
comed him as men are rarely welcomed by their fellow- 
citizens. The ladies waved their handkerchiefs, the men 
cheered and hurrahed with long-continued enthusiasm. 
After the applause had subsided, Mr. Seward said : 

I was at Auburn in this our old and honored State of New York 
in October, and I spoke then what I thought would be pertinent to 
public affairs for a whole year. The summons of friends in the city 
of New York brings me back after the expiration of only three 
months. Their demand is, I confess, rather hard upon me, under 
the circumstances. Nevertheless, I obey. I am no Secessionist. I 
profess to understand how to obey the commands of the people of 
my own State without violating my allegiance to the United States. 

Now, what shall I speak of or about? The call of your meeting 
specifies the subject. But first, let me say that I am not here as an 
alarmist; I am not here to say that the nation is in, peril or danger — 
in peril if you adopt the opinions of the President; in peril if you 
reject them; in peril if you adopt the views of the apparent or real 
majority of Congress, or if you reject them. It is not in peril any 



SPEECH OF MR. SEWARD. 

way; nor do I think the cause of liberty and human freedom, the 
cause of progress, melioration, or civilization, the cause of national 
aggrandizement, present or future, material or moral, is in danger of 
being long arrested, whether you adopt one set of political opinions 
or another. The Union — that is to say, the nation — has been rescued 
from all its perils. The noble ship has passed from tempests and 
billows within the verge of a safe harbor, and is now securely riding 
into her ancient moorings, without a broken spar or a leak, starboard 
or larboard, fore or aft. There are some small reefs yet to pass as 
she approaches those moorings. One pilot says that she may safely 
enter directly through them. The other says that she must back, 
and, lowering sail, take time to go around them. That is all the 
difference; it is merely the difference of opinion between the pilots. 
I should not practice my habitual charity if I did not admit that I 
think them both sincere and honest. But the vessel will go in safely, 
one way or the other. The worst that need happen will be that, by 
taking the wrong instead of the right passage, or even taking the 
right passage and avoiding the wrong one, the vessel may roll a 
little, and some honest, capable, and even deserving politicians, 
statesmen, President, or Congressmen may get washed overboard. 
I should be sorry for this, but if it cannot be helped, it can be borne. 
If I am one of the unfortunates, let no friend be concerned on that 
account. As honest, as good, as capable politicians, statesmen, Con- 
gressmen, and Presidents will make their appearance hereafter, faster 
than needed, to command the ship, as well and as wisely as any that 
have heretofore stalked their hour upon the deck, in the alternations 
of calm and tempest that always attend political navigation. 

Nevertheless, although I do not think we are in a crisis, the ques- 
tion to-day is worthy of deliberate examination and consideration. 
It is always important, in going into a port or preparing for a new 
departure, to take accurate observations, in order to ascertain whether 
the ship and crew. are sound and in good fastening and in good sail- 
ing condition. The subject before us is a difference of opinion that 
reveals itself but too clearly between the executive administration 
of the President and the legislative counsellors of the nation. The 



President, as we all see, is a man of decided convictions; the legisla- 
tive leaders, if we may judge from their resolutions, are trying to 
decide not to coincide with him in opinion. They have appealed to 
us, outsiders as we are, to pronounce between them. I will try to 
show you what the nature and character of the difference is. 

Some of you, few or many, have been occasionally in a theatre. 
You may remember a play that had some popularity a few years 
\ ago, entitled "The Nervous Man and the Man of Nerve." Both of 

5 

\ these characters were well-to-do country gentlemen. They had been 
friends in early life. Their friendship grew with their years. They 

\ lived in distant parts of the country. The nervous man had a hope- 
ful son ; the man of nerve had a loveable daughter. By some freak 
of fortune, or some more capricious god, these young people had acci- 
dentally come together at a watering-place, and there formed an 
attachment unknown to their parents. In the meantime the nervous 

\ man and the man of nerve had come to an agreement to marry the 
two young people together, under a belief that they were entirely 
unknown to each other. Each parent made the announcement to 
his child in a mysterious manner. The nervous man's son was told 
that he was to be married to an unknown lady with whom he was 
sure to fall in love at first sight, but whose name must be withheld 
until the day of the ceremony. The daughter of the man of nerve 
received a similar pleasant intimation. Each lover protested, each 
parent was peremptory, each lover impracticable. As a natural con- 
sequence both ran away, and, as was quite natural, both came to- 
gether, and they were clandestinely married. "When the nervous 
man heard of his son's contumacious disobedience he denounced him, 
disinherited him, disowned him, and declared he would never see 
him again. When the man of nerve heard of the flight of his daugh- 
ter he immediately summoned his dependants, who sought to restore 
her to her father. One parent was all passion, the other was all 

/ decision. While they Avere comparing their mutual and common 

I grief and disappointment, the married lovers came trembling into 
the angry presence, and kneeling down, asked forgiveness and 
parental blessings upon what was now irrevocable. What was the 



6 SPEECH OP MR. SEWARD. 

parents' suprise to find that the runaway match was just precisely 
the one they had planned, and the supposed failure of which had so 
deeply excited them. The man of nerve acquitted himself with 
becoming resignation, and, since it had all ended right, he extended 
to the lovers the boon they begged. The nervous man refused alto- 
gether to be comforted, propitiated, or even soothed. He refused 
and declared that he would persist forever in refusing to receive 
back again the son who had been so disobedient. When his out- 
burst of passion had somewhat subsided, the man of nerve said : 
" Well, now, old friend, why won't you forgive him? Have you not 
got the matter all your own way after all?" " Why, yes," replied 
the nervous man, "I have got it all my own way." "Then, why 
will you not forgive him?" said the man of nerve. "Why, damn it, 
I haven't had my own way of having it." This, I think, is the dif- 
ference between the President, who is a man of nerve, in the Execu- 
tive chair at Washington, and the nervous men who are in the House 
of Bepresentatives. Both have got the Union restored as they orig- 
inally planned it should be. They have got it restored, not with 
slavery, but without it; not with secession, flagrant or latent, but 
without it; not with compensation for emancipation, but without it; 
not with compromise, but without; not with disloyal States, or rep- 
resentatives, but with loyal States and representatives; not with 
rebel debts, but without them; not with exemption from our own 
debts for suppressing the rebellion, but with equal liabilities upon 
the rebels and the loyal men; not with freedmen and refugees aban- 
doned to suffering and persecution, but with the freedmen employed 
in productive, self-sustaining industry, with refugees under the pro- 
tection of law and order. The man of nerve sees that it has come 
out right at last, and he accepts the situation. He does not forget 
that in this troublesome world of ours, the most to be secured by 
anybody is to have things come out right. Nobody can ever expect 
to have them brought out altogether in his own way. The nervous 
men, on the other hand, hesitate, delay, debate, and agonize — not 
because it has not come out right, but because they have not 



SPEECH OP MR. SEWARD. 

individually had their own way in bringing it to that happy termi- 
nation. 

I have said that I apprehend no serious difficulty or calamity. 
This confidence arises from the conviction which I entertain that 
there never was and never can he any successful process for the 
restoration of union and harmony among the States, except the one 
with which the President has avowed himself satisfied. Grant it 
that the rebellion is dispersed, ended, and exhausted, dead even at 
the root, then it follows necessarily that the States sooner or later 
must be organized loyal men in accordance with the change in our 
fundamental law, and that, being so organized, they should come by 
loyal representatives and resume their places in the family circle 
which, in a fit of caprice and passion, they rebelliously vacated. All 
the rebel States but Texas have done just that thing, and Texas is 
doing the same thing just now as fast as possible. The President is 
in harmony with all the States that were in rebellion. Every exec- 
utive department and the judicial department are in operation, or 
are rapidly resuming the exercise of their functions. Loyal repre- 
sentatives, more or less, from all these States — men whose loyalty 
may be tried by any constitutional or legislative test which will 
apply even to the representatives of the States which have been 
loyal throughout — are now standing at the doors of Congress, and 
have been standing there for three months past, asking to be admit- 
ted to seats which disloyal representatives, in violence of the rights 
and duties of the States, as well as of the sovereignty of the Union, 
had recklessly abandoned. These representatives, after a lapse of 
three months, yet remain waiting outside the chambers, while Con- 
gress passes law after law, imposes burden after burden, and duty 
after duty upon the States which, against their earnestly expressed 
desires, are left without representation. So far as I can judge of 
human probabilities, I feel sure that the loyal men from the now 
loyal States will, sooner or later, at this session or at some other, by 
this Congress or by some other, be received into the Legislature of 
the nation. When this shall have been done, the process of restora- 
tion will be complete ; for that is all that now remains to be done. 



SPEECH OP MR. SEWARD. 

If, in this view of the subject, my judgment is at fault, then some of 
those who now uphold the opposite one can show some other pro- 
cess of restoration which is practicable, and which can be and will 
be adopted, and when it is likely to be adopted. Does any person 
pretend to know such a plan? Other plans, indeed, have been men- 
tioned. They were projected during Mr. Lincoln's administration; 
they have been projected since. Briefly described, these plans have 
been such as this: that Congress, with the President concurring, 
should create what are called Territorial Governments in the eleven 
States which were once in rebellion, and that the President should 
administer the government there for an indefinite period by military 
force, and that after long purgation they should be admitted into the 
Union by Congressional enactment. This proceeding was rejected 
by Mr. Lincoln, as it is rejected by the President. If ever it may 
have been practicable it is now altogether too late. If tlie President 
could be induced to concur in so mad a measure at this date, it would 
be impossible to execute it. Say what you will or what you may, 
the States are already organized, in perfect harmony with our 
amended National Constitution, and are in earnest co-operation with 
the Federal Government. It would require an imperial will, an im- 
perial person, and imperial powers greater than the Emperor of 
Prance possesses, to reduce any one of these States, with the con- 
sent of all the other States, into what you term a territorial condi- 
tion. Maximilian's task, though it engages two Emperors and two 
imperial organizations, with their forces, it is thought not the most 
wise and hopeful political enterprise of the day. On the other hand 
we have no Emperor, but only a stern, uncompromising, radical 
Republican, a Democrat, call him what you will, for President, who 
refuses in every way to be a party to any imperial transactions, and 
who would hand them back to Congress if they were to offer him the 
men and money to prosecute such imperial enterprises. Suppose that 
he could give place to another President, whether by election, or even 
assassination, where will you find in the United States a man who 
would want to be elected to that high place to plunge this country 
into a civil war for a political chimera? If there be such a one, 



SPEECH OF MR. SEWARD. 

what chance is there that he -would be elected for such a purpose? 
That scheme, then, is at an end, and it is not now even seriously 
mentioned. Is there any other plan ? Congress has a Keconstruc- 
tion Committee, as it is called, composed of fifteen members, w r ho 
have have stopped the wheels of legislation three months to enable 
them to submit a process or plan different from that which is now 
on the eve of a happy consummation. And what have they given 
us? One proposed amendment to the Constitution, to compel the 
excluded States to equalize suffrage upon the penalty of an abridg- 
ment of representation. I do not discuss its merits. Either the 
amendment will or will not be adopted. The expectation is, that it 
will fail even in Congress. In any case it implies a full restoration 
of the Southern States. It is, therefore, no plan or process of recon- 
struction at all. The Committee prove this to be the true character 
of the proceeding, because they fall back upon a process not of resto- 
ration, but of obstruction. The resolution which they submitted 
Tuesday last, and which has passed the House of Bepresentatives, 
directly declares that loyal representatives shall not be admitted from 
loyal States until Congress shall pass a law for that purpose — which 
law, it would seem that every member who votes for it must know, 
cannot be enacted without the President's approval, which cannot 
be consistently given in view of the opinions that he is known to 
entertain. This concurrent resolution, then, is not a plan for recon- 
struction, but a plan for indefinite postponement and delay by the 
concurrent action of the Houses of Congress. 

I know that the scriptural instruction is not always accepted as 
an infallible guide of faith in these latter days. I do not, therefore, 
ask you whether the United States Government ought not now to 
slay the fatted calf and invite our prodigal brethren to so luxurious 
a feast; but I do venture to say that when this nation became dis- 
organized five years ago by flagrant secession and rebellion, we did 
determine to humble the rebels and bring them back again to their 
constitutional seat at the family table. I know that we have hum- 
bled them, and have brought them back with humiliation and repent- 
ance sueing for restoration. I know that when Congress was con- 

2 . \ 



10 SPEECH OF MR. SEWARD. 

venedj and when the last elections were held, which gave utterance 
to the popular voice, it was their expectation that without unneces- 
sary delay that table would bo set, and that all the members of the 
family, however prodigal they had been, would be received at the 
board. 

There being, then, no further plan of restoration, what are the 
chances of carrying out the system of obstruction to which I have 
referred? It is as impracticable in its character as I think it is 
vicious. If I have read the history of this country correctly, it has 
settled these three things : First — ~No State can keep itself out of the 
Union or keep itself in a territorial condition under the Union. In 
the very beginning four States refused to enter; with wry faces they 
all came in afterward — making the whole number of States thirteen 
instead of the nine first consenting. All the region east of the Mis- 
sissippi rushed rapidly through a brief territorial pupilage into the 
Union. "We bought provinces from Spain, from France, from Mexico. 
From the Mississippi to the Pacific they have I'ushed or are rushing 
with railroad speed, after a brief territorial existence, as States into 
the Union. If it were possible, we might acquire still more prov- 
inces, North or South. You cannot easily go further West. Every 
province that there might be gained, whether w T hite or black, old or 
young, alien or native born, would be immediately rushing, as with 
railroad speed, as States into the Union. Another thing which our 
national history teaches is, that the States which are in the Union 
cannot be taken or kept out of its limits; and that is the great 
lesson of the rebellion. The third thing which this eventful war 
teaches us is, that the States which are in the Union cannot keep 
any States that are outside from coming in. Congress is habitually 
inclined to this experiment. It hesitated about Michigan and Mis- 
souri; it reeled and staggered before Texas and California; and it 
convulsed the nation in resisting Kansas; yet they are all in the 
Union, all now loyal, and most of them cheerful and happy. How 
many Committees of Conference did we have, how many Joint Com- 
mittees did we not have, on this momentous question? How many 
Joint Resolutions, denying that Congress ever would consent to the 



SPEECH OF MR. SEWARD. 11 

admission of such unwelcome intruders? How many compromises, 
securing guarantees for freedom, securing guarantees for slavery, 
were broken and scattered, when one after the other these States 
came in, as if by a headlong thrust and hurled by an Almighty 
Providence, who was determined that the people of this Continent 
shall be not many discordant nations, but one united and harmonious 
nation. 

I entered Congress in 1849, when the Joint Committee of Fifteen 
was skillfully, and it is but just to say, honestly framed to obstruct 
the admission of California until the majority of the nation should 
compromise and silence forever the debate upon slavery. The Com- 
mittee succeeded in excluding California for a period of eight months 
and no longer, and eventually obtained, in broken fragments, the 
compromise which it sought. That compromise was by its terms to 
be perpetual. The compromise of 1850 lingered, however, just four 
years and then perished, giving place to the incipient and now hap- 
pily consummated adjustment of the slavery question, by the com- 
plete and universal abrogation of that institution. I left Congress 
in 1861, when Committees and Conventions clustered in and around 
the Capitol, demanding stipulations (which Congress refused) that 
fetters should be put upon New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado. You 
can never keep States out of this Union, never, no never! If we do 
not like them, we may, in the words of the old proverb, "lump 
them." The present distrusts of future States or of existing States 
have no substantial ground. They are begotten of miserable perish- 
ing fears and factions. California was susp>ected of secret or ultimate 
complicity with slavery. All the men in the Union knew the hard 
feelings her people entertained toward us Free-soilers, who were 
their most earnest advocates. AVe gave her ten years of pro-slaveiy, 
Democratic rule. The ten years are now up, and she is calm, per- 
haps distrustful of some of us yet, because we are willing to admit 
the States that have sinned and repented as she did. If ever this 
thing of keeping out States by Joint Resolution of Congress could 
have had any chance of permanent success, that time has passed 
away. No State has ever been hindered in coming into the Union 



12 SPEECH OF MR. SEWARD. 

except upon questions growing out of the system of African bondage. 
But African bondage has now gone to the dogs, and tliey have made 
a sure finish of it. Not even enough of its shriveled skin or dis- 
jointed limbs remains to sharpen the cupidity of the race that were 
once called slaveholders, or of that other race which was known to 
the country as "doughfaces." No State, therefore, will ever, here- 
after, be hindered or delayed in coming back into the Union upon 
the ground of slavery. 

You may think that the irresistible tendency to Union which I 
have described may have something alarming in it. This would be 
a grave error. I think no such thing. The people in any Territory 
want to be a State, because it is a pleasant thing and a good thing 
to have the municipal powers and faculties which belong to a State 
witbin the American Union, and to provide by its own laws for the 
maintenance and security of life, liberty, and property. A territory 
wants to be a State and a member of the Federal Union, because it 
is a pleasant thing and a good thing to have its protection against 
foreign enemies, and to possess the privileges and immunities guar- 
anteed to a State by the -national Constitution. I therefore would 
not consent to hold a State in a territorial condition, or to deny it the 
advantages of fellowship in the Union a day longer than I should 
be compelled. Nor do I see anything calculated to excite alarm, 
anything transcending the political ability of our statesmen, in the 
present situation of the freedmen. In the beginning, practically, 
every State in the Union had slavery. We abolished it in several 
States without disorder or civil commotion, until slavery raised itself 
in rebellion against the Government of the Union. When it took 
that attitude, we abolished it out and out, through and through, com- 
pletely and effectually forever. This is what the American people 
have had the sagacity and the courage to do in a period of ninety 
years. These American people are a great deal better and a great 
deal wiser to-day than they were ninety years ago. Those of the 
generation that is now crowding us; will be a great deal wiser and a 
great deal better than we who are on the stage to-day. Do I think, 
therefore, that we shall lack the wisdom or the virtue to go right on 



SPEECH OF MR. SEWARD. 13 

and continue the work of melioration and progress, and perfect in 
due time the deliverance of labor from restrictions, and the annihi- 
lation of caste and class. "We have accomplished what we have 
done, however, not with an imperial government — not with a pro- 
consular or territorial system. "We have done it in States, by States 
and through States, free, equal, untrammeled, and presided over by 
a Federal, restricted Government, which will continue to the end the 
constitutional progress with which we so wisely began. They are 
settling the whole case of the African in the "West Indies just as we 
are, and it will be done with the same results and the same benefi- 
cent effects. 

I have not given prominence in these remarks to the conflict of 
opinion between the President and Congress in reference to the 
Bureau for the relief of Freedmen and Refugees. That conflict is, 
in its consequences, comparatively unimportant, and would excite 
little interest and produce little division if it stood alone. It is be- 
cause it has become the occasion for revealing the difference that I 
have already described that it has attained the importance which 
seems to surround it. Both the President and Congress acree that, 
during the brief transition which the country is making from civil 
war to internal peace, the freedmen and refugees ought not to be 
abandoned by the nation to persecution and suffering. It was for 
this transition period that the Bureau of Freedmen was created by 
Congress, and was kept and is still kept in effective operation. Both 
the President and Congress, on the other hand, agree that when 
that transition period shall have been fully passed, and the har- 
monious relations between the States and the Union fully restored, 
that Bureau would be not only unnecessary but unconstitutional, 
demoralizing and dangerous, and therefore it should cease to exist. 

The President thinks that the transition stage has nearly passed, 
and that the original provision for the Bureau is all that is necessary 
to secure the end in view, while the bill submitted by Congress seems 
to him to give it indefinite extension in time of peace and restora- 
tion. He vetoed it for that reason. He declines to accept, as un- 
necessary and uncalled for, the thousand or ten thousand agents, the 



14 SPEECH OF MR. SEWARD. 

increased powers and the augmented treasure which Congress insists 
on placing in his hands. Congress, on the other hand, thinks that 
the Freedmen's Bureau is not adequate, and that more patronage, 
more money, and more power would, like Thompson's doorplate, 
purchased at auction by Mrs. Toodles, be a good thing to have in a 
house. I agree with the President in the hope that the extraordi- 
nary provision which the bill makes will not be necessary, but that 
the whole question may be simplified by a simple reference to the 
existing law. The law of March 3, 1865, which created the Freed- 
men's Bureau, provides that it shall continue in force during the war 
of rebellion and one full year thereafter. "When does that year 
expire? In the President's judgment, as I understand the matter, 
the war of the rebellion has been coming and is still coming to an 
end, but is not yet fully closed. It is on this ground that he main- 
tains an army, continues the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, 
and exercises martial law, when these things are found to be neces- 
sary in rebel States. The existence of the rebellion was legally an- 
nounced by Executive proclamation in 1861. The end of the rebel- 
lion ought to be, and may be expected to be, announced by compe- 
tent declaration of the President and of Congress, or of both. For 
all practical purposes, the rebellion will, in law, come to an end if 
the President or Congress, one or both, officially announces its ter- 
mination. Now, suppose this announcement to be made by the 
President and by Congress, or by either of them, to-morrow. In 
that case, the Freedmen's Bureau is continued by virtue of the lim- 
itation prescribed in the Act of March 3, 1865, one year after such 
proclamation shall have been made. Thus the Freedmen's Bureau 
would continue, by the original limitation, until the 22d day of Feb- 
ruary, 1867 — a very proper day on which to bring it to an end. If 
Congress should then find it necessary to prolong its existence, Con- 
gress can at once take the necessary steps, for it will at that date have 
been in session nearly three months. Ought the President of the 
United States to be denounced in the House of his enemies — much 
more ought he to be denounced in the House of his friends, for 
refusing, in the absence of any necessity, to occupy or retain, and to 



SPEECH OF MR. SEWARD. 



15 



exercise powers greater than those which are exercised by any im- 
pei'ial magistrate in the world? Judge ye! I trust that thig fault 
of declining imperial powers, too hastily tendered by a too confiding 
Congress, may be forgiven by a generous people. It will be a sad 
hour for the Republic when the refusal of unnecessary powers, 
treasure, and patronage by the President shall be held to be a crime. 
When it shall be so considered, the time will have arrived for setting 
up at the White House an imperial throne, and surrounding the 
Executive with imperial legions. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



013 785 659 1 



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